A low unit price feels like an opportunity and means nothing. What matters is the total valuation implied by that price across all coins in existence.

A large gap between market cap and FDV is a warning: it means substantial future supply is scheduled to unlock, and that supply has to be absorbed by new demand or the price falls.

• Circulating supply: coins actually tradeable today.
• Total supply: coins created, including locked and vesting allocations.
• Max supply: the hard cap, where one exists.
• Fully diluted valuation (FDV): price times max supply — what the asset would be worth if every coin existed today.

Market cap is not money invested and not money that could be withdrawn. It is a notional figure derived from the last traded price. An asset with a $1bn cap and thin order books may only be able to absorb a few million dollars of selling before the price collapses — liquidity and cap are different questions.

Market cap is most useful as a relative measure: comparing an asset to peers in the same category, or asking what the price would need to be for a project to reach the valuation of an established competitor. That framing turns a vague narrative into a number you can sanity-check.